Catcha Digital Berhad (CATCHA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
February 27, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Leong-Yit Tan
executiveGood morning, everyone. Welcome to our Q4 2025 online investor briefing. I'm Eric, familiar face that you have been seeing for many, many times. So I think now it's on time. So we're just going to get started. So as usual, we are going to cover 5 areas. So I'm going to start with key highlights this quarter. And then I'm going to go quickly into the overview of the company, what we wanted to do, what we are doing now and what we plan to do in the future. These are a set of refreshed slides that we have prepared over the last 3 months as we progress in our vision to build a permanent home for great private companies. And then I'm going to go quickly into the financial update. And on the financial update front, I think this time around, we have a little bit more to share as well given the evolution of our business. And then we'll give a quick update on some of our M&A that has happened during the quarter, and then we'll go into Q&A shortly after that. So in a nutshell, this is the highlights for the quarter. So in 2024 Q4, we completed 3 acquisitions on the M&A front. So on a full year basis, we completed 7 acquisitions out of 9 that we have announced. So it's broken down into a few pieces. So the first part would be a 100% acquisition of Technave. So that marks our expansion into consumer technology, digital media assets. And then we have also completed a 60% acquisition of Framemotion, so expanding into the immersive experience base enlarging our iMedia business. And we have also executed our call option to increase the stake in Headline Media to 80% from 30%. So moving from an associate to a subsidiary of our media business. In terms of financing, I think right now, we have well over MYR 100 million of available acquisition capital. So it is broken down to a few things. So one is we have set up a credit facility with Affin of MYR 35 million for us to fund some of our acquisitions. In 2025, we have utilized about close to MYR 12.5 million in the acquisition of One International and Framemotion, and we are in talks to upsize the facility as we speak. Secondly, we raised a MYR 24 million Rights Issue with Warrants with an additional MYR 73 million over the next 5 years potentially raised if fully exercised. And the Rights Issue, we saw a 78% oversubscription. From an internal cash flow point of view, it will continue to be a key source of funding. So in 2025 alone, we generated about MYR 11 million of net cash from operations. And if I take out some of the CapEx that we had invested in 2025, it's about close to MYR 10 million that is free cash flow. As at December 31, our cash balance stands at about MYR 31 million. So I think we are in a very strong cash position to continue to grow and execute our strategy as we move forward. From a financial performance standpoint, it's record financials across all key metrics year-on-year. So on a statutory basis, we -- our revenue grew about 76% to about MYR 67.6 million. EBITDA grew to close to MYR 14 million, up 72%, PATAMI on a statutory level -- sorry, up like 6% and EPS down 3%, which I'm going to explain a little bit more from an adjusted basis. So you see this time around we started reporting adjusted number. This is quite similar to what many companies in the U.S. will report to reflect -- to better reflect operating performance in the underlying business. In the U.S., they call it non-GAAP earnings versus GAAP earnings, it would be -- GAAP would be the equivalent of MFRS. So on an adjusted basis, revenue, there's no adjustment. So it's the same as statutory. Adjusted EBITDA of MYR 14.8 million, up 83% adjusted PATAMI up 64% to MYR 8.5 million and then the adjusted EPS up 3% to MYR 0.0226. And then what we're going to do next is the same thing as what we have been doing in the last 3 years to continue to grow the business organically, combining both organic strategic growth initiatives and M&A to continue to compound cash flow and create long-term shareholders' return. And HQ will continue to execute acquisitions that are earnings accretive and our OpCo CEO will continue to drive the underlying earnings of the business. So I'll quickly go through the chart kind of overview, so that everyone's level set on who we are, what we do. Since the last time we spoke, we've included an extra slide on the evolution of Berhad as an entity. So the Berhad is actually listed in 2011 as a media business and over the years, transforming the digital media business and got sold. And in 2023, it I would say, a new life in our business. And we started injecting the assets of iMedia, which is our core digital media business today. And over the course of last 5 years, we've acquired, I think, 13 companies and many of which we have read online, but we prepared this, especially for the ones that have just joined us in the journey. Overall, where we are today is that -- what we're trying to build is really a permanent home for market-leading private companies in the digital media space and technology. And to many of the owners or sellers that sell the business partly or wholly to us, they really see us as a Chapter 2 partners to empower and scale the business that they have built from 0 to 1, right? So then we had a Chapter 2 to bring them from 2 to 10. And why some of them sell, and I think it's quite important to share as well because it's very clear to all our investors that acquisition is a big part of our growth strategy, and we did 7 deals last year. I think it's only fair that we emphasize why this works for us. And the most important thing is they see us as a long-term partners of their business. We are a steward of the legacy, and we think long-term. And our permanent capital base means that we are not short-term like many private equity and venture capital investors. We are happy to take a 10-, 20-year view on the business and they work alongside the partners knowing that in between, there may be ups and downs. But once we decide to commit, we commit hard. Secondly, a lot of them like selling to us because over the process of getting to know each other, we assess the quality of the team, and we generally really like the fact that they continue to run the business, and we don't force any integration and they have autonomy to run the business like an entrepreneur. And they continue to retain the culture and the independence and only really integrate and commercially collaborate with other companies under our family where it makes sense, especially commercially. And third is that now we come in as a strategic partner and supporting the growth in the journey of building the business from Chapter 2. And there are a few very practical examples. So in some cases, in the digital media business, we support the OpCos with our balance sheet and M&A expertise that is coordinated at the HQ level. In some cases, some of our businesses benefit from the fact that they are now part of a public company, and there is a credibility behind that, that they can take on bigger projects to execute expansion. And more importantly, we act as a -- I guess, a strategic sounding board and a network connected across the group. But now like joining us is joining another community of entrepreneurs that can help each other out, except we all have stakes in your business, right? And it's a long-term partner. And ultimately, we also provide a path for some liquidity for the founders to take some money off the table. And many of the owners that we work with are in the 40s, in the 50s. They want to not worry about the kids' education, the parents' retirement and they provide a pathway to that. And this really -- these all things really caters to a very specific sets of companies that are highly profitable. They may not grow super-fast, but they are profitable, unlike many start-ups as funded by VC. They may not be very big, but they are very stable and they -- that's perfect SMEs for us to kind of grow them into part of the [ indiscernible ]. On a more, I guess, financial or number standpoint, what we have built in the 5 years in a snapshot is a business that on a pro forma level would have been a MYR 100 million, MYR 108 million revenue business on an EBITDA level, about MYR 24 million, assuming that we own all the businesses that we acquired last year for a full year. So this is basically we add up all the full year financials of 2025. Assuming all of them obviously, currently, when we are reporting, it's based on when we acquire the business. But on a pro forma level, assuming we own them 100%, this will give you a very good picture of what you should be expecting in 2026 because it's a year that we fully consolidate all the businesses acquired. On an investment standpoint, in the last 5 years, we have met well above 900 companies. And there is about close to 200 that we negotiated about close to 40 that we presented to IC and acquired 14 companies over the last 5 years. And a big chunk of it came from last year and then the 7 was a lot earlier than the starting years. On a capital standpoint, every deal that we look at is 20% IRR. What that basically means that if we pay $1, we expect to get back to $1 in 5 years' time. And obviously, that's a very simplified way to look at it on a -- I guess, on a more practical basis, we'll be looking at we buy company at 4x to 9x PE. Over time, in the future, we will start shifting the way we talk about valuation from PE to an EBITDA basis, which I'll explain a little bit more later on and typically we pay between 2 to 4 years, which has also effect on our statutory numbers for better or worse. And ultimately, it's typically based on some form of profit or performance guarantee by the seller. So this is a snapshot of the pro forma financials on the previous slide that I mentioned. So again, this is an estimate. I want to clarify that this does not represent any forecast or guidance or assurances on our part. I think it's purely prepared, so that all our investors get a sense of what the company would look like, assuming that we have owned all the 7 companies that we acquired plus existing business that we have for a full year. So as you can tell today, digital media is still a bulk of our business. So about 91% of our revenue still comes from the digital media sector. Last year, we did 7 acquisitions of which 5 source under the digital media segment. We expanded the B2B trade expo by way of acquiring a 60% stake in One International, a leading B2B expo organizer, which we intend to build upon as another platform asset. So we're going to acquire smaller add-on acquisitions to the B2B expo platform. We entered in the software space acquiring a 51% stake in a company called Nexible. So this is early days. We'll continue to observe and develop our -- execute our strategy in this space. And on a HQ standpoint, we single it out because this has been one of the bigger expense for us as a group that in some ways, suppressed the overall group numbers over the last 3 years because we invest upfront to set up infrastructure and process the system and the talent in place to be able to execute this. And I'm very happy to see that last 3 years, we have made many, many meaningful progress, and the business is growing very well, which I will talk a little bit more later on the financial sense. In a nutshell, every year, we target to acquire between MYR 5 million to MYR 15 million in EBITDA or between 3 to 10 companies. We might well acquire 0 companies if we can't find the right companies at the right valuation. But acquiring good, profitable, stable, sustainable businesses that fit within these 3 categories will continue to be a key focus for us as a company. In a nutshell, what we are trying to do is really to invest and acquire solid companies at a decent valuation. We scale this company, taking them from the Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 with us through organic growth and M&A. So all the businesses that we buy have good underlying tailwind, and we believe that we'll continue to grow organically over the long haul. And then where it makes sense, we buy more companies to support them or independently build new pillars. We at a group provide guidance and support with best practices and capital and network to enable them to grow. And then the cash flow that we generate from all these businesses that we have, we will reinvest it back into our business and/or acquiring more companies at a very disciplined multiples. And with that, we hope we can compound shareholders' value in the long-term. So in summary, we buy good companies at good price. We invest the cash flow to grow our business and just keep doing that over and over and over again. And this would give you a good snapshot of how we think about the structuring of team. But in short, on the HQ level, we're responsible for allocating capital, securing capital and deciding the strategy of the business and across the group and making sure that we have the right people, process and technology in place for long-term success. On the operating company level, all our CEOs and management team own the bottom line and the business P&L. They integrate any add-on acquisitions that we bring on board to the platform. So the 5 acquisitions that we acquired are parked under the care of our CEO at the digital media business Tze Khay. And then other than that, the day-to-day operations and execution is done locally at the operating company's level. I wanted to stress that what we're doing here is not really new. This has been done for like the past 20 over years by many companies that you may have heard of or also some that you may not have heard of. So what we're doing here is a concept called serial acquirer. And what it basically means is that we incorporate a systematic with acquisition strategy as a primary growth engine alongside our organic growth of the business. And the idea is that we believe our business growing organically, churning out cash flow, the best way for us to reinvest it is to acquire good companies at a good price that will continue to allow us to reinvest the cash flow moving forward. And there are many details that I can go into it, but I'll just really touch on a few things. So why people like it is because it has proven to generate superior returns over the long haul. Over the long haul, I mean, like 20, 30, 40 years, many examples, all the logos that you see on this slide are some examples. A lot of investors like it because you don't only rely on organic growth, you also rely -- you also can benefit from inorganic growth by way of very disciplined acquisitions. And more importantly, especially in the world of full of uncertainty these days, a lot of investors like the fact that it's a reduction of risk across diversified niches and geographies offers a very resilient kind of environment against a single market or pure play risk. And this is a little bit different from fund managers picking stocks right because that would have been mostly intellectual exercise. In our case, there is an exercise of picking private companies that would have never been found or accessible to public market investors. And in some ways, you can think of us or some investors would like to see us as a private equity -- looking for private equity sort of return in a public market space. And how a lot of these companies became very successful globally, and I will share some examples later on, is that we separate the capital allocation role from the operating role, meaning, we focus on what deals to do. And then the operating company focused on day-to-day operations and making sure that the decisions are made quickly, and the decisions are made by the people that's very close to the customer. So what we're trying to avoid is that I make decision for the clients of our digital media business. That's what we want to avoid because that will make things very slow. And we set up system and structure in place to allow for a rapid execution of our operations on an operating level. And very often, there's a culture aspect to it where we set up incentives and culture to allow us to be able to reinvest cash flow and working capital very efficiently. And ultimately, because we think we are a permanent owner of businesses, so we can make decisions that may be bad for the short-term, but may be very good for the long-term and therefore, providing a much stable prospect for many -- for the businesses that we own. And there's obviously a lot of underlying tailwinds a family business transition. A lot of businesses are at a stage where they hand over to the next generation of operators. There's legacy preservation. But more importantly, there is a deep pool of SMEs in Malaysia and in Southeast Asia that we can tap into. And this is an example of some of the comparables or global companies that we look up to. And these are our 8 names across multiple markets from CHAPTERS Group in Germany, HEICO, Danaher, Roper in the U.S., Halma and Informa in the U.K. and Lifco in Sweden and what they are trading at in 2025. And I guess the key message is that we are very early in our journey, and many of you are part of the journey right now, which we are very fortunate to have you on board. And we hope more and more investors will join us in the journey of building the #1 and the only -- probably the only serial acquirer out of Malaysia and Asia that is public, especially. And this is, I guess, a chart to show that it's a proven strategy to create capital and shareholders' return over time. I think the Constellation software has been doing this for close to 30 years. HEICO has been doing this for close to 35 years, acquiring more than 100 business. Lifco has been doing this even way before the IPO days for close to 30, 40 years, buying close to 140 business. And CHAPTERS Group is a little bit younger. So it started out in 2019. And you can see the key difference between all these companies that it took a long time for Constellation, HEICO and Lifco to get investors to understand what they do. And for someone like CHAPTERS Group that started more recently, they have proven that investors understand a lot better now because, I guess, in some ways, we're standing on the shoulders of giants, much like us. We learned a lot from all these businesses that came before us and we, in some ways, draft behind the challenges that they have faced over the years. And one thing that's quite interesting to point out is, I think this is relevant later on when I share about the financial performance. If you look at CHAPTERS Group, you might realize that, hey, it's not meaningful when I look at PE ratio, but they're trading at 50x EBITDA. So this will be the one on -- the second one on the top and the last one at the bottom. And the key reason, not like us, we are subjected to a lot of accounting standards that are noncash that would depress our net income, but actually, the underlying business is doing very, very well, as you could tell from the performance from a cash flow basis. So here are some of the people. I think it's the same people that you have seen over the last 5 years -- 3 to 5 years as we have been working on this journey. So at the Board level, Patrick and Luke as a major shareholder and with Justin and Shireen kind of overseeing and guiding us on a more strategic level. On the executive level, as mentioned, we have HQ people, myself, Oscar, Cedric, Yi Hong, who works on the deal, M&A and driving the overall group strategy. And on the OpCo level, we have Tze Khay driving our digital media business whom has worked with Patrick for more than 20 years. I've worked with Patrick and Tze Khay for the last 8 years in many different capacity. And recently, we added Roger to the roster. So he is the CEO of One International driving our B2B expo platform. Similar to Tze Khay we will -- the digital media business. We continue to build and expand via M&A, and he will be overseeing the B2B expo space. And on the software space, it's still very early. So it's now still looked after by the HQ team. And until when we feel like we need a person to oversee, we will update all of us, team. On the kind of just overall basis, these are 3 sectors that we focus on in 2021 started digital media, very stable now, made good fundamentals characteristics of the business. I won't go into details. These are all available online. B2B expo started 2025, software started 2025, and we continue to build upon these 3 pillars in time to time. And these are all good sectors with good margins with good tailwind and independent of each other to reduce dependencies. Like a quick note on just how big the market is, I think in Malaysia, just by looking at the companies that we focus on the 3 pillars, there's MYR 89 billion worth of revenue out there. And this is just Malaysia alone, right? So we haven't even started looking out yet, which we are 20% of our pipeline is out of Malaysia. So the long story short is that we have a long runway to go to execute our strategy. And this has also been proven in other market as well that those guys buying businesses for the last 20, 30, 40 years. So that's a nutshell of what we're trying to do moving forward, what we plan to do. I'm going to quickly touch on our financials. So here, you are seeing a statutory financials. And the key is that you would have seen our business as close -- almost close to double across all key metrics, except for our profit after tax and PATAMI, sorry. And I'll explain in the next slide why that is the case, even though it's not a very good representation of our business. So a more technical and precise manner, we have created these slides, which I'll spend some time to explain how we think about the business from an operating level, right? So in a nutshell, we have grown our EBITDA by 83% year-on-year. Our PATAMI has gone up 64% year-on-year. EPS has gone up 53% year-on-year. And we generated MYR 11 million of cash flow and cash is sitting at close to MYR 31 million. And I will draw your attention to these 3 numbers, these 4 kind of columns. What we did was a bit of adjustments on noncash M&A-related items, which I'm going to go into explaining a little bit more what all these things mean both on a technical level and on a, I guess, layman level. So all these things are footnoted in the next slide. We didn't make any adjustments to 2024 because we did not complete any deal in 2024. So like there's nothing for us to adjust. So here, you would have seen an official statement to explain a non-MFRS measures that we have put to allow us to share with our investors how us, from a management standpoint, use these things to understand and manage and evaluate the business that we have and make actual day-to-day decisions. And our -- these financial measures reflect adjustments based on some of the following items. So number one, these are all M&A-related costs. This includes due diligence costs, the cost to host EGM, the legal fees, stamping fees and some interest that is related to M&A facilities and the setup fees as well. And these are all costs that will not have been incurred if we never buy any companies. And we believe it's very important for us to show our investors the impact of these items as a total operating expenses. Second is the gain on waiver of debt. And these are in short restructuring, you can think of it restructuring when we have -- we are in the process of shutting down one company with a write-off some debt. So we have a paper gain on our balance sheet, but there's no cash involved. We have a deal that we pay less hangs on our P&L. It looks like we gain something, but actually, it's just an accounting entry to that we have to follow, but these are all noncash in nature. So we excluded that even though it's gain on our P&L to provide a more consistent view of our operating income. The third one will be unwinding of interest on deferred consideration. In short, these are basically an accounting requirement for us to value the deferred consideration. Basically, when we buy a company, we pay, say, 50% upfront, another 50% get paid in 2, 3 years. And the standard requires us to value the purchase consideration, this deferred payment on a present value basis and that's how we have to kind of reflect the time value of the money for the fact that we buy now, but we pay later. And again, this is a noncash accounting adjustments and we excluded it so that you can see the actual financing obligation and operational results of the business that we acquire. And then finally, it's amortization of intangible assets. So every time we buy a company, we are required to conduct a purchase price allocation exercise, and that's basically saying we need to decide how much of this is goodwill, how much of this is intangible asset, et cetera. And for the intangible assets that we picked up, and this could be brand, could be software, could be company contracts. It is noncash and we required to amortize them. While these intangible assets contribute to the revenue of the business, these are quite inconsistent, and this is just purely M&A outcome and does not reflect the business of the group or our ability to generate cash. So I'm going to go on a more layman term. So I think hopefully, it's a bit easier to understand. So the first one is quite straightforward. So I won't use any analogy, right? The second one is gain on waiver of debt. I think a good analogy is you get a contractor to renovate your home, and you say, hey, if I'm going to pay you MYR 50,000 to do everything. But the last MYR 10,000, I only pay you if you finish in 30 days. The contractor takes 60 days to finish. So he miss a deadline. I get to keep the MYR 10,000. So technically, I did not meet the accounting rules, it says that all I gain. But that's just simply because we don't pay full price for the target companies because they didn't hit the earnout or the targets that they were going to set out to hit in order to get the full purchase consideration. So this is a function of our earnout structure that to protect ourselves from the downside. So that's an outcome from a business reality. The third one will be the unwinding of interest on deferred consideration. So this is a simple way to think about it is imagine you buy a sofa for MYR 10,000 and then you buy now but pay in 2 years with 0 interest. So technically, in 2 years' time, you pay MYR 10,000. But from an accounting standpoint, the MFRS will tell you, even though the store didn't charge you any real cash interest, nothing in life is truly free. So MFRS tell you, hey, you have to pay them like there is interest for paying later. So every month, we have to record small interest expense on our books, even though we are actually still going to pay MYR 10,000 at the end. So this is a bit like a gross interest. So we're not actually writing a check to the bank. It's just a technical rule that no future payment on to today's book, so purely an accounting exercise. And finally, amortization of intangible assets. So a fair analogy is if we buy a new car for our business for MYR 100,000, the moment -- we all know the moment we drive off the car, the value drops every year, only -- the value on paper drops even though your car may last you for way longer. Obviously, car is a physical asset. So there is a very real or sorry, physics behind that say your car will be broken in, say, 10 years or 20 years, but you depreciate everything in the next 5 years because the company -- that's probably the best. But the car is still doing its job and helping you make money every single day. So when you buy a company like Technave we have to "depreciate" the value of the intangible assets brand, software, customer relationships of paper. So it doesn't mean that this is worthless. In fact, they're growing, but it's just accounting cost of owning the assets. And I think it's quite important for us to really understand from that point of view. And in summary, I use an example, right, to illustrate that. Our statutory PATAMI reported at MYR 5.4 million. So this accounting view of the business. We add back M&A-related transaction and financing. And then we deduct the gain that we actually gained from -- the paper gain from the fact that we pay less to our seller and some internal restructuring. And then we add back the paper interest of the deferred consideration unwinding interest, no cash leaves the bank and then we add back the amortization of intangible assets of close to MYR 0.5 million. These are paper depreciation from acquisitions. It doesn't exist if you never buy any companies and no cash actually leaves the bank. So then you get to the final number of MYR 8.5 million. And this is really how we look at our business internally. And we will continue to report in this manner so that all our investors are aware of the difference between what we need to report to the authority and what actually the business is doing. And if you don't take anything out of this, like I mean, you can take quotes from the legendary Warren Buffett. In the U.S., the difference is typically between GAAP and non-GAAP and in multiple occasions, he has shared his view on how GAAP accounting, which is the equivalent MFRS in the U.S. can actually mislead investors that only purely look at the statutory net income. So in some ways, you can say that like we -- our way of looking at adjusted PATAMI is similar to how Berkshire would look at operating earnings and it's really the only way to see the real cash generating power of the companies that we acquire. So as an example, we have been generating good cash over last year, we grew our operating cash flow was about MYR 11 million and previously it was negative. And if you compare across all categories, I think you will see our digital media business is best-in-class compared to all the public companies that you can see in terms of durability at scale and just way more diversified, no single dependency risk. Next, I'm going to quickly touch on M&A update. I think I'm a little bit behind time, I'll leave some time for M&A. So if you have any questions, there's some time for Q&A, so feel free to drop it in the comment box and I'll address them at the end of the session. So a quick update on M&A. So this is a summary of all the companies that we have announced an acquisition. So as you can see, we announced 9 acquisitions in the last 15 months. Also in 2025, completed 7 out of the 9 that we have announced, of which 4 and 5 Theta and Digital Symphony was canceled. Theta was mostly due diligence reasons. Digital Symphony was a valuation gap, and we decided that's not the right deal to do anymore. Hence, we pull back from that. For the few deals that we completed in Q4, so Framemotion, I think we have shared quite a bit about the business over the past few quarters as we spoke, the founders who continue to work in the business for as a 40% owner of the business, drive the business alongside Tze Khay and his team to grow the business. And this is like a snapshot of what Framemotion does. And some of you might have seen recently, Public Bank did a 60-year anniversary. Let me try to play this. It's a little small. I'm not sure if you guys can hear the music. So this is a video from their page, but I'll just pull it forward so you can see these are some of the work that we do. I thought this is a good example is quite recent. So Public Bank engaged Framemotion to create this immersive experience showcase to commemorate the 60-year anniversary, which I thought was a good example to show. A year, we do about 300 projects. I think we are -- I can quite say we're #1 in what we do across Malaysia and Southeast Asia, and we cover quite a wide ground. And the hope is that we can continue to grow the business alongside Jim and Jacob, the founders of the business, in their Chapter 2. Here, I have included a video of their showreels, but I think I won't stay on too long. This will be available on our website and on YouTube, on Instagram, if you like, there's a link here that you can click into after this call and have a look at what they really do. I think the video just give you a sense already, so I won't spend too much time here. Another deal is Technave. So we acquired a company called Technave. The details have been shared as well. It's a consumer technology digital media business, and we will continue to grow the business alongside with the team that we, I guess, acquired over. Headline Media is an owner of WeirdKaya, which I think a lot of you are quite familiar with. So in December, we exercised a call option to acquire another 50% of the business. The slight change in terms that we only paid MYR 800,000 at completion and then another MYR 3.2 million to be paid in end of the year. As you can see under our ownership since 2023 when we invested 30%, the business has grown quite tremendously. So from a MYR 100,000 business to close to MYR 1 million, and then last year we did about MYR 1.8 million in profit after tax. So I think that's again a testament of the strategy and the team and the people behind the business. So effectively we're acquiring this 50% stake at about 4.5x profit. Again, go to their website, go to their Instagram page, or the TikTok page, you will be able to learn a lot more about the business. I think that's it. So I will leave open to Q&A now, and see if there's any questions, please feel free to fire away.
Leong-Yit Tan
executiveOkay, let's go. [ YC Lim ] asks, what is credit facility rate and are all 7 acquisitions going to meet profit guarantee as end December 2025? I'll answer one by one. So the credit facility rate on a high level it's about 8%-ish effectively all in from a cash flow basis. So that's the rate we are looking at. Seven acquisitions meet profit guarantee? So I think most of the businesses are on track to meet their target for the upcoming year. So what we think would be likely scenarios, some of them will outperform, some of them will underperform. For the cases where they underperform, we are very much protected on downside. So we worry less. But we do everything we can to make sure we support them going forward. [ Zicheng ] asks, is there anything KL Foodie did well can be adopted by Catcha? This is a tricky question to answer because I think we all fundamentally focus on a very different strategy. I think a big part of Foodie's growth came from probably 2 Instagram accounts, and a big part of their growth in the past came from SMEs, both of which are not how we typically think about building a long-term sustainable business. We focus a lot more on enterprises like across 400 times -- 300 plus clients that we have are generally MNCs and large corporate. I think KL Foodie has done quite well to feel that hey, like they can monetize the smaller businesses as well. I think that is something that we could learn from. Although I think we are actively assessing whether that is the right strategy for us because the good thing about SME is that they can decide very fast, the bad thing about them is that they can drop off very fast as well. So we will be quite wary to see the return rate of these customers. Most of our customers spend a lot of money with us every single year, but I do not know the same can be said about their business. Another thing that I think is quite interesting for us to explore would be the live streaming space. So the live commerce, the TikTok shop, TikTok live selling. I think broadly I think most people agree in the short-term that you can probably make some money out of this business. What we are not very sure internally is how sustainable this business is. So this is another form of affiliate marketing channels and history has shown that most affiliate marketing channels will typically then over time lose their economics to the platform owners like TikTok shop. So 3 years ago Shopee changed their policies and all the bloggers businesses got massively affected and we think it is a very similar environment. That said, I think we are actively exploring partnership opportunities with some of the partners that we know. Part of the businesses -- sorry, some of the partners that we know that can help us deliver some of the needs from our customers. We got customers that ask if we can help out on the live streaming side of their requirement. We carefully assess it. But as a business, we don't really like it. I think we have met all the live streaming players in town and the conclusion that we come with is it is a highly operating business -- operational business that will affect our margin and has very different DNA. But that said, we pay close attention to the development in the industry and we continue to make a decision whether we want to participate or not as we grow. But now we are a bit wary for some of these reasons left. We have [ Kit ] asking, can I understand if B2B Expo is making losses, how is Tastefully and One International doing? So broadly the B2B Expo making losses is you will see an internal report is just the nature of the business. So One International organizes between 2 to 4 events a year. Two is for sure, and then another 2 may be more ad hoc. Two are own IP events. It all happens in Q3. So because of that our revenue are all concentrated for our Expo business in Q3. And it just nature of this. So Q4 they don't have any events, there's no revenue. On a full year basis, hence, we prepare a pro forma P&L for our investors to really get a good sense of what if we own them for a full year. And that is one of the reasons why we do that because if you only look at 1 quarter or 2 quarter it really distorts the quality of the business. So if you look at B2B Trade Expo on the screen right now, you can see that on a full year basis it will look something like that, right, that the business will perform in this manner and you may see a right EBITDA is like lower than the profit after tax because we own a 49% stake in a company that we can't consolidate the revenue but it contributes to our profit as well. So on a full year basis they would have done MYR 3.6 million in EBITDA or profit after tax of MYR 3.8 million. So Q4 is just simply because we don't have any events and this is well within expectation so there is no surprise to us. But I think what we could have done is maybe explain it a little bit better last quarter so that there is no surprises. But the reality is as such that most of the profit will come from the month where we host events and as it is right now, the show happens once a year and most of them are all in Q3. And hence we have this I guess in some ways slightly weird I guess quarter where sometimes we lose money in certain quarters. But again, it's very important for us to look at us as a full year business. I think you would have seen in our financials that on a full year basis the business has grown very, very well. And I think that's something that we should really focus on where across the board revenue is up 76%, EBITDA up 83%, PATAMI up 64%, EPS up 53%. I think these are all not just a testament of the strategy but really there are many, many very smart, talented, hardworking people that allow for this to happen. Zicheng mentioned many companies seem like directly connect with KOL to do promotional video as you can see during this CNY festive. Catcha has anything need to learn from this trend or evaluate to set up this arrangement continue to grow whether no need intermediary in between? So I think there are two parts I will address this question. Right, so one is the production of this video, and two is the intermediation of the middle person between KOL and the brand. So us, we normally only do production for clients that buy media from us. And I think it is quite important to draw a clear distinction. Today, we are not a production company. We are a media owner. We own many media assets across multiple platforms, multiple languages, multiple industries. And that is why our brands or our clients come to us. They do not come to us because we can help them produce a CNY video. They come to us because we can help them reach the 20 million Malaysians that we touch every single month, which is more or less all the Malaysians that have purchasing power, which are all the advertisers care about. And then the second question is around will we be relevant or not. Today, our KOL business is, I suppose, an add-on or an upsell to our core media business. What that means is that when a brand comes to us and wants to buy media from us, we alongside tell them, hey, we also have a KOL business. And what that means is, on a stand-alone basis, we actually do not think a KOL business is a very good business model because it is a business of an agency. Meaning, someone young enough, hardworking enough can start a business like that because there is an agency, there is no real IP behind it. You are just connecting people from arbitraging information and labor work. And today, AI can even do that, right? So it is even harder for someone to start a KOL business if they are purely looking at the old way of doing business. So for us, we generally do not like this business on a stand-alone basis. But for us, it is a great business because we can attach it alongside all our products and upsell it to our clients. And because our clients are typically big customers, they would rather deal with us to provide a one-stop solution and provide them with high-quality reporting and analysis of the campaign than to go do it on their own, right? Obviously, they can. Not to say that they can't. We always can do it on our own, but the question is, are you better off doing it on your own in consideration of the objectives that you want? And in most cases, we are dealing with big companies with a sizable marketing budget that care more about what we provide them in value and quality than just purely a dollars and cents perspective. So I hope that answers the question. Right, so yes, disintermediation will happen across many, many industries, not just in our industries. But that is not a focus of our business. We are a media owner, we are not an agency business in nature. So I think what we a bit more worried is -- actually, no. I'll take that back. I think I'll stop it at that. So [ Mark JR ] asks, now many companies under Catcha, next is sell each company when good price, try to list them when time right time like Sunway? So we have no intention to sell any companies that we own. When we acquire these companies we make a commitment to the seller that we are a permanent owner of the business and we plan to stick around for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years and steward their legacy. And that is our ultimate goal. So hence they liked us. If they wanted to sell the company they will probably go for a private equity fund that come in for 5 years and then sell it to someone else. But the businesses that we like, don't have this sort of characteristics or the owners are not looking for that. So no, the answer is no. We don't plan to sell them. The question on listing, like Sunway, I think we also have no plans to lease any of our businesses. Although, there may be scenario where if for whatever reason, someone come and ask and they want to buy our some of our businesses for, like, a ridiculous valuation, then maybe we will consider. But that is purely out of fiduciary duty to our shareholders that we need to maximize shareholders return. When it comes to listing, I think in years to come we will have operating subsidiaries that is going to be big enough to list on their own from a financial standpoint. But that doesn't mean that we should. Because listing is not an outcome, it is just a means to an end. If we don't see any need to really list the business, we don't need extra capital, we don't need to spin it out, there is no commercial reasons to be stand-alone, there's no need. I think listing this business just creates more regulatory and compliance challenge for the operating business. And right now the way we are managing it is on an HQ level we deal with that, right, so of course CEOs don't have to worry about all these things. But that said, if there is a good reason for us to list, whether to raise capital for some of our operating subsidiaries and we decide that is the best way to do it or there is a value trap within our group, then we might consider it. But it is not a everyday conversation. I think we will talk about it when it comes. Jason asks, will every quarter show adjusted EBITDA and PATAMI like Q4? Yes, so the short answer is that we will continue to show the adjusted number on a quarter-to-quarter basis. And the whole objective is to show the underlying operating performance of the business. So that you have a very clear understanding of whether our businesses are doing well, without the noise or like the complexity of technical equity accounting when it comes to business combination and M&A. So that would be the trend moving forward. And also I think again we are not the only one doing this so it takes a playbook from the giants like Berkshire and also serial acquirers all over the world. Wonderful. I think we are out of questions. Apologies we ran over time a little bit, but I appreciate everyone dialing in. As usual, these slides will be up on our website at the end of the day. I'm going to fix a few typos that I just realized, and you can access it on our website. If you have any more questions, feel free to e-mail me directly. If any of these things don't make sense to you. And thank you for the support.
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